MURDER, SHE WROTE

What do a snow sculptor, a petty thief, and a few murders have to do with each other? It’s up to Jessica Fletcher to find out.

Jessica is heading off on a Mystery Lovers Cruise when a fall on icy steps puts her in the hospital. Her dear friend Dr. Seth Hazlitt gives her mixed news. Nothing is broken, but several bad sprains will keep her in a wheelchair for weeks, and if she wants to go home, she must have full-time help. So, Jessica takes on Alice Myers, who’s bright, attentive, a wonderful cook, and a wannabe writer. In the meantime, Cabot Cove Sheriff Mort Metzger is dealing with the murder of a husband, apparently by his vanished wife, and a man stealing food and clothes who’s been nicknamed the Bologna Kid. Jessica’s friends ply her with food and gossip. The author, whose dining room serves as her bedroom till she can walk again, tries to work on her next book and enjoys helping Alice with the fantasy novel she’s trying to write, but the view out her window keeps drawing her attention away. The house across the street has been rented by Rymer (“that’s what he goes by—just Rymer”), a sculptor whose efforts tend toward the pornographic. Whenever word gets out of a new project, crowds assemble to watch him. Rymer turns out to be a bounty hunter, and when he’s stabbed to death on his front lawn, Mort and Jessica focus on the question of who he was hunting.

Another down-home adventure swimming with red herrings.